What price MacBook beauty?

Ever have one of those moral debates with yourself? You know, where you find yourself involved in a battle over doing the right thing, versus doing what you really want to do? I had just such a debate today…

Logic:
Look, the
mid-range white one
is $200 cheaper. Sure, the hard drive’s a little smaller, but—$200! That’ll more than pay for your 1GB RAM upgrade right there.
Emotion:
Ooooh. Look at that
gorgeous matte-black finish
!
Logic:
Ignore him. $200 will buy, what, at least a couple tanks of gas. OK, more than that, but man, is it expensive or what?
Emotion:
Did you notice that
matte-black finish
?
Logic:
See, Mr. Repetitive’s only got one thing to say. Fine, if you don't want to save the $200, take it and buy that $199 PlayStation 2 bundle you saw at Costco last weekend. The white one will work out just fine for you.
Emotion:
Oh, look,
every
side is that same nice matte black finish
!
Logic:
Aren’t you tired of listening to his blather yet? White will be cooler when the machine gets warm. Every other Mac product you own is white or silver. You haven’t even filled a 40GB laptop drive yet, why do you need 80GB?
Emotion:
Did I mention how nice this matte black finish looks?

In the end, Emotion wins a split decision after 20 minutes of wrestling and walking between machines. Yes, I paid the $150 “there’s a sucker born every minute” matte-black plastic tax. Why? Really, it
was
emotion. I just love the way the matte black unit looked. That’s somewhat odd, as I don’t particularly like the black
iPods, but I love it on the MacBook.

Yes, the screen shows some glare, but not a lot when you’re using it at a normal “work” angle—even in a very well lit room. And in exchange for that glare, you get an amazingly sharp and bright image. The keyboard, despite its odd appearance, must have identical key spacing as a standard PowerBook—I had no issues at all with touch typing. It also feels amazingly solid—like it’s cemented to whatever’s underneath it. It’s the most solid laptop keyboard that I can recall using.

I’ve barely had time to get the
MacBook
out of the box, so I don’t have a lot to say about it from a performance perspective—
Macworld Lab does, though—though I expect it will make my old
12-inch PowerBook G4
feel mighty slow. Look out eBay, here comes another used 12-inch PowerBook!